LISEY'S STORY

Stars: Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, Joan Allen, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dane DeHaan, Ron Cephas Jones and Sung Kang.
Writer: Stephen King, based on his novel.
Director: Pablo Larraín

Eight episode limited series; screening on AppleTV+.

Rating: ★ ★ ★

From source material that Stephen King cites as his most personal novel comes a work that feels like an arthouse, post-horror spin on the tropes and themes favoured by the author. It’s the ‘arthouse’ and ‘post-horror’ elements that explain the presence of star Julianne Moore and Chilean director Pablo Larraín, both of whom wield executive producer might (with producer J.J. Abrams also weighing on) on the AppleTV+ limited series, Lisey’s Story. 

Allowing the most successful author of all time to script every installment of the 8-episode arc may have proven one creative visionary to many. Everyone involved seems determined to draw something deep and meaningful out of the King bestseller and craft a work of precise beauty, layered plotting and dark psychology. And while moments of Lisey’s Story convey all those things, it’s never wholly convincing or, more’s the concern, compellingly scary. Compared to recent adaptations of the author’s work, it represents a marked improvement over CBS’ ill-conceived reworking of The Stand, but falls well shy of last year’s HBO stunner, The Outsider. 

King’s novel was published in 2006, written while recuperating; one account says it was pneumonia, the other complications from his being struck by a van in 1999. The writer’s wife Tabitha took advantage of her husband’s downtime and cleaned up his office, packing many of his half-works and scribblings into boxes. King imagined this is how his workspace would look after he died, an image from which his most heartfelt narrative grew.

The utterly committed Moore plays Lisey, the widow of publishing phenom Scott Landon (Clive Owen), who was struck down by an assassin’s bullet two years prior. While continuing to struggle with her grief, she also wrangles her relationship with her sisters, the short-fused Darla (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and the often catatonic Amanda (Joan Allen). At the same time, her late husband’s scumbag colleague, Professor Dashmiel (Ron Cephas Jones) wants Scott’s unpublished writings and acquires the services of Landon’s most unstable superfan, Jim ‘Dandy’ Dooley (a legitimately unhinged Dane DeHaan; pictured below) to convince Lisey to give them up.

Beyond these real world concerns are the realms of imagination and fantasy that symbolise Scott’s memories. The murky psyche of the late author is represented by a creepy aquatic amphitheatre known as ‘Boo’ya Moon’, populated by a shrieking Lovecraftian giant formed from howling humans and home to Amanda in her worst moments. Lisey begins to understand her husband’s sad past, brought to life in horrific flashbacks to Scott’s boyhood abuse at the hands of his father (an unrecognizable Michael Pitt). With that insight comes the ability to travel between worlds, giving Lisey control of a new destiny, albeit one that walks a dark path filled with physical terrors and raw memories.

Pablo Larrain draws superbly etched character work out of his female leads (Jackie, 2016; Ema, 2019; the soon-to-be-released Spencer) and his work with Moore excels at exploring the sadness and longing in Lisey. But King’s fantasy/horror elements prove altogether more challenging for the director; he stumbles in his conjuring of menace and foreboding, often too enthralled by image over substance (the usually reliable DOP Dharius Khondji proving another overqualified hired hand not in tune with the material).

Lisey’s Story is the end result of a lot of mismatched top-tier talents, although crucial shortcomings fall largely at the feet of writer King. Moore and especially Owen gurgle out his dialogue, which is often not dialogue at all but repetitive cues that infer meaning while actually having none (“Babyluv?”, “Babyluv…”). That it remains watchable at all, and there are moments (mostly from DeHaan as the most celebrated of King’s archetypes, the ‘crazed fan’) that are certainly watchable, Lisey’s Story is a textbook case of its parts being greater than its whole.